One of the companies at the 2008 National Biodiesel Conference and Expo is Solazyme, a company that is making biodiesel out of algae. In fact, the folks from Solazyme brought a sweet ride to the conference… a Mercedes Benz C320 that runs on the green fuel made from the green algae.
I caught up with Jonathon Wolfson from Solazyme and asked him some questions about how his company was able to produce the fuel from what some people might see as an unlikely source.
He pointed out that algae are the original oil producers on the planet. “Frankly, the last time you filled up your car with any petroleum fuel, chances are the oil that fuel was made from came from algae, maybe a hundred million years ago. The strategy has been to take the original oil producers, which, by the way, are the most efficient oil producers and collapse that 100-million-year process into a few days,” Wolfson says.
Wolfson his algal-biodiesel is meeting tough American standards for diesel and the even more stringent Euopean standards. For the consumer, he says they’ll find the fuel performs superbly, sometimes even better than conventional petroleum diesel.
Right now, his company is producing the algal-biodiesel in small quantities, but he hopes that within the next couple of years, they’ll be on a commercially-viable scale of production.
Listen to my entire interview with Wolfson by clicking here: [audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/nbb/nbb-08-wolfson.mp3]
Check out the conference blog to see more stories and pictures and see more pictures.
Country music star Michael Peterson was one of the featured speakers at this morning’s 
Cindy grabbed Michael for a quick interview right after he returned from a test drive of a 2008 Dodge Ram 3500 diesel pick up truck running on B20. As he stepped out of the vehicle, he joked how he was just sure the organizers meant for him to take the truck home (sorry, Michael!). But, seriously, he really loved the way the vehicle drove and its acceleration.
Reports of the demise of the ethanol tariff in the new 
Domestic Fuel is here at the 2008 National Biodiesel Conference and Expo in Orlando, Florida, bringing you the latest updates from this gathering of biodiesel industry experts.
Just after we flew into the sun and warmth of a beautiful Central Florida day, Cindy was off to track down Ed Hegland, chairman of the National Biodiedsel Board. She caught up with Ed at a session on sustainable biodiesel production where it was announced a new task force would be formed to look at making biodiesel more sustainable and possibly move away from more expensive feedstocks, such as soybeans.
The 2008 National Biodiesel Board Conference and Exp is underway in sunny Orlando, Florida, where thousands of biodiesel producers, marketers, and industry folks gathered for the four-day event.
Domestic Fuel is there as well, covering the events of the conference. We’ve already heard presentations on sustainable biodiesel efforts, the state of the industry, and even a Super Bowl party featuring NFL Hall of Famer Jack Youngblood (shown with me… Jack is on the left), who was signing footballs and helmets to raise money for the National Biodiesel Foundation… a group that is promoting education and research efforts to advance the biodiesel industry.
A food bank association and a renewable energy company have joined to produce electricity from food and food by-products that would have been just thrown away.
The Ontario Association of Food Banks and StormFisher Biogas, an Ontario-based renewable energy utility will work together to produce the power through what’s being called Plan Zero, according to 
Well, if you don’t, you will by the end of the 2008 National Biodiesel Conference & Expo in Orlando, Florida next week. I’ll be there covering the event for energy.agwired.com and posting on 
One of the best things about a conference like this is all the new information that will debut… including the results of testing BioExtend , a high-performance antioxidant for biodiesel fuels that increases shelf life and enhances product protection. 
Colleen Crowninshield, manager of the Pima Association of Governments’ Clean Cities Program, said, “It has been a long time coming. I receive phone calls and e-mails every day with people asking when Phoenix will have a retail station. Now I can actually have a positive response and tell them that they can find fuel for their flex-fuel vehicles in the market.”
Indications are that the Bush administration will make changes to the ethanol tariff in its budget to Congress scheduled to be released Monday. Earlier this week, Energy Secretary Sam Bodman hinted that the White House’s 2009 budget may propose scaling back or eliminating the 54-cent-a-gallon import tariff.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA)